Proper rain systems before emergency

John AdamaStaff - December 21, 2020

[See the full post at: Proper rain systems before emergency]

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Love the idea and the material. Been using it in a wilderness survival setting but now that we bought a house i want to start to implement the preparation/self-reliance aspect. For areas of high air pollution, what concern would you have and/or steps would you take to make that kind of contamination usable?

 

Thinking out loud… there isn’t much you can do about gaseous contamination without constantly replacing a carbon filter. But you could address particulates. Those particulates (eg. soot from a nearby plant) could already have mixed with the water that’s coming into your tank, or settle down through the air and land in your tank on their own. So how do you prevent those particulates from getting into the main water storage?

One idea is build the collection surfaces in a way that lets the presumably-heavier particulates settle down before the water makes it into your tank. Imagine a long gutter with a slight slope. As the collected rainwater rolls down the slope, hopefully particulates settle. Kind of like gold mining, with the riffles in a sluice box.

You could also combined concepts, putting an inline gravity filter in between the collection surfaces and the tank. That way anything coming through is filtered. Depending on your rainfall and pollution, you might need to backflush/swap the filter once or twice a year? A little bit of a PITA, but could be worth it depending on your needs. 

In the end, you can probably make a difference but not entirely solve the problem. It’s one of those things where we have to reap what we sow (pollution). 

Anyone know of other ideas?